Friday 29 June 2018

Marcus Miller - Laid Back, album review

Laid Back as a Speeding Freight Train


My break and music-injection from marking this evening is the brilliant bassist Marcus Miller’s latest Laid Back where the live opening track Trip Trap is as far from laid back as a bass funk fest on a frenzied freight train can be with its stunning Miller lines and other accompaniments.

This is followed with an on-fire funked-up Que Sera Sera with Selah Sue on iconoclastic sassy vocal with this Doris Day classic that delights as much as it surprises after the album’s explosive instrumental opener.

And so it continues – majestic music from the premier bassist and his creativity in collecting such fine musicians around him as well as song selection, as in penultimate Keep ‘Em Runnin’ where vocal and bass merge beneath the actual vocal lines and their hip hop roots [and this song based around Earth Wind & Fire’s Runnin’], and in closer Preacher’s Kid written as a tribute to Miller’s recently passed father, where its beautiful opening chorus pans out to such joyous exclamatory saxophone play offs.


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